The Covenant of Genesis (44 page)

‘Although,’ Callum said with evident reluctance, ‘keeping her alive might be a better option. For now.’

‘Why?’ Vogler asked. ‘What did you find?’

Ribbsley regarded Nina with an aggrieved expression. ‘We found the map. Unfortunately, part of it - the most vital part - has been destroyed. There was enough left to tell me that Eden is somewhere in eastern Africa . . . but I think we’d all come to that conclusion already.’

‘What about the rest of the library?’ demanded Zamal, waving a hand at the shelves. ‘There must be
something
here that can help us!’

‘Perhaps - but it would take months of study. And, unfortunately, Dr Wilde is probably right - the Veteres took the most valuable tablets with them. We might be able to locate some of the other sites on the map, but that’ll take time.’

‘Time we don’t have,’ said Vogler. ‘If Chase and Blackwood get away . . .’

‘They won’t,’ Zamal insisted. ‘My men will stop them.’

‘
If
they get away,’ Vogler went on, ‘we need to catch them.’ He held up the empty pouch of Nina’s camera. ‘They have pictures of the map.’ He turned to his men, gesturing at four of the five. ‘Get back to the surface, take two of the paracraft and find where that shaft leads. If Chase and Blackwood make it out of the cavern . . . I want you to be waiting for them.’

‘The shaft is that way,’ said Sophia, pointing towards the dam as they emerged from the hypogeum.

‘Yeah, but the sledge is this way,’ Chase replied.

‘So are the rest of the Covenant.’

‘They’re not here yet,’ said Chase, with a glance towards the road. He reached the sled and righted it. Most of the gear was scattered over the ground nearby, but some pieces - including the gas cylinder - had stayed secured. He picked up the rangefinder’s heavy tripod and tossed it aboard, then hurried back downhill, tugging the sled behind him like a recalcitrant dog. ‘Get a shift on!’

Sophia ran with him. ‘Shit! Here they come!’ Five men in snow camo barrelled round a building after them. ‘You’d go faster if you let go of that thing!’

‘We need it!’ They reached the edge of the ‘lake’ at the base of the dam, where water had pooled below the bottom of the shaft. Chase was fairly sure it would have frozen thickly enough to support their weight, but the ice still creaked alarmingly as they rushed across it.

The troopers were catching up. Ahead, the sloping face of the dam rose to meet the flat ceiling of ice, the dark circle of the drainage shaft at its foot.

Sophia headed for it. ‘Eddie, hurry up!’

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ The sled rasping over the ice behind him, he clomped towards the shaft entrance, heart pounding. A look back. The Covenant soldiers had split up, three of them still running, spreading out, the remaining pair stopping, crouching, taking aim—

‘Incoming!’ he warned as Sophia reached the hole and ducked inside. Chase dived after her as the soldiers opened fire, bullet impacts showering him with cold soil and stones. The bottom of the shaft was caked with ice that had frozen as the last dregs of lakewater flowed away. A tiny point of light shone in the distance.

The sled bumped to a stop against his legs. ‘Okay, get on!’ he told Sophia as he drew the gun.

She gave him a deeply dubious look, but obeyed. ‘How many bullets have you got left?’

‘One.’

‘
One?
’

‘It’ll be enough.’
I hope
, he didn’t add as Sophia climbed aboard the sled. He lay on top of her. ‘This doesn’t mean we’re back together, by the way.’

‘God forbid,’ she sighed. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Giving us a kick-start!’ Left hand gripping the frame, feet braced against the rear cross-member, he aimed the gun - not at the entry to the shaft, but at the gas cylinder taped to the sled. ‘Threetwoone -
ignition
!’

Two soldiers sprang into view, rifles at the ready—

Chase fired, blowing the brass valve off the end of the cylinder.

Highly pressurised, highly flammable gas jetted out - and was ignited by the gun’s muzzle flame.

A ten-foot-long lance of fire sprang from the gas tank, sweeping over the two men like a blowtorch - and sending the sled rocketing down the shaft.

Chase dropped the gun, struggling to grip the sled’s frame as it hurtled down the passage. The roof of the shaft was less than a hand’s-width above him, his clothing scraping against it with every bump. Sophia screamed, and he could understand why - the cylinder was straining against their legs, trying to rip free of its restraints.

If it came loose they would be dead, crushed as the sled flipped or incinerated as the tank shot past . . .

Blue light surrounded them - they were through the dam, into the glacier on the other side. But if anything, emerging from the darkness only made the ride more terrifying: now they could see just how fast they were going.

And they were no longer going straight, the sled lurching off course and riding up the side of the shaft—

Chase joined in the screaming as the sled corkscrewed up the wall, on to the ceiling - and dropped down again on the other side, having made a complete rotation. It reached the bottom again, snaking from side to side before straightening out.

The roar of the flame stuttered and died. The sled began to slow.

‘J-Jesus!’ said Sophia, voice quavering. ‘You are a bloody
maniac
!’

Chase’s only response was a whoop of something between exultation and terror. He let the massive kick of adrenalin start to disperse, then looked up to see how much of the shaft remained ahead.

Not much.

‘Sophia?’

‘What?’

‘How high off the ground did this come out?’

‘Oh,
God
!’ she cried as they shot out into empty space.

Chase opened his eyes to find himself in an alien landscape. It took a few seconds for his mind to process what he was looking at, strange gnarled and twisted columns rising all round him like the bones of some giant glass monster. He realised where he was; the jet of water from the drainage shaft, coming out under enormous pressure, had carved a great cave out of the other side of the crevasse, the water then flowing away to leave a collection of bizarre blasted shapes as the ice refroze.

And he and Sophia had ended up in the middle of it, slamming down on the ice and skidding into the surreal amphitheatre before crashing to a halt.

He staggered upright. The sled’s journey was over; one of its runners had been torn off, the frame bent around the lump of ice that had brought it to an abrupt stop and catapulted its passengers into the weird cave. He took a step, wincing at a sharp pain in his shin. The sled’s contents were strewn all around. He picked up the tripod to use as a makeshift crutch, its spiked metal feet digging into the ice as he turned.

‘Sophia!’ She was sprawled about twenty feet away in a pile of fragmented ice. He limped over to her. She was still breathing, little clouds drifting from her nose. Blood ran from a deep cut on her chin. ‘Sophia? Come on, wake up.’

‘Eddie, not now,’ she mumbled in complaint, before her eyes snapped open and she clutched at her jaw, her glove coming away with a Rorschach patch of blood on the palm. ‘Ow, oh God! My face, Eddie, you’ve wrecked my bloody face!’

‘If that’s all you’re bothered about, you’re probably fine,’ Chase growled. ‘You should put some ice on it.’ He looked at their frozen surroundings, then gave her a theatrical shrug. ‘Dunno where we’re going to find any, though.’ He smiled as he turned away from her look of fury and raised the walkie-talkie, hoping it had survived the beating. ‘Matt! Matt, it’s Eddie. Are you still there?’

Silence for a long moment, then: ‘Eddie! Christ, mate, you’re cutting it fine - your hour’s almost up! Where are you? Are you okay?’

‘We’re in the crevasse, where the drainage shaft came out. How long will it take you to get here?’

‘We’re about eight clicks away, so . . .’ A pause as he consulted Larsson. ‘About five minutes.’

‘We’ll be here.’

‘Okay, on our way.’

‘Make it quick. Out.’ He turned back to Sophia, who had scraped up some loose ice and pressed it to her face. ‘Think you can stand up?’

She jabbed both feet at him. ‘If you were any closer I’d kick your arse.’

‘For fuck’s sake, stop moaning,’ he said, lifting her. ‘I’ve had my face bashed up tons of times, and I never worried about it ruining my looks.’

‘Yes, but you were hardly starting from a high baseline, were you?’

‘Bloody hell, shallow much?’ They picked their way across the cave, using the tripod for support. ‘It didn’t bother you when we were married.’

‘I can only put that part of my life down to temporary insanity.’

‘What, as opposed to the permanent insanity you’ve got now? You’re not a bunny-boiler, you’re a bloody bunny-
nuker
!’

‘If you have such a problem . . .’ Sophia tailed off as they heard a low buzzing. ‘Is that the plane? That was quick.’

They emerged in the ice-slathered crevasse, the high walls casting everything into deep, cold shadow. ‘It’s not the plane,’ Chase said, looking south. The noise grew louder, echoing off the walls - revealing two distinct engine notes. ‘Shit! They’ve found us!’

A pair of gleaming black shapes swept over the top of the crevasse and wheeled round under their blood-red rectangular parachutes, heading straight for them.

Chase had seen similar machines before. Invented in New Zealand, home of crazy and dangerous leisure activities, the paracraft were a mutant combination of paraglider and hovercraft, the latter’s main fan used to inflate the fabric wing at takeoff and provide forward thrust like a propeller. The differences between a paracraft and an ultralight were that the former was larger, the squared-off, stubby wings protruding from its sides giving it much greater lift at low altitudes through ground effect - and that its hovercraft base meant it could not only take off and land on almost any terrain, but travel overland at speed by releasing the ’chute.

Making them ideal pursuit vehicles for the Antarctic wastes.

He saw two men in each paracraft: one pilot - and one gunner. The gunner in the lead paracraft was carrying a sniper rifle, while the man in the second aircraft had a Swiss SIG assault rifle.

Sophia started to back into the cave. Chase grabbed her wrist. ‘No, get between those.’ He pointed at several huge boulders of ice that had fallen from the ravine walls.

‘I don’t think we’ll be any better off,’ she said as they hurried down the slope.

‘If they land and trap us in the cave, we’re fucked. At least this way we’ve got some room to manoeuvre.’ The paracraft were three hundred feet away, closing fast. The lead paracraft dipped its nose, descending into the canyon.
Good
, Chase thought - in the relative confines of the walls, they wouldn’t have enough room to turn, meaning it would take them time to swing about and make another pass.

Assuming they missed on the first one.

‘Down!’ Chase yelled, dropping the tripod and pulling Sophia behind the fallen boulders. The SIG’s harsh bark filled the crevasse, a three-shot burst blasting chunks from their cover. But the bullets didn’t penetrate it, the millennia-old blue ice compressed almost as densely as stone.

‘Come on!’ He crawled into a narrow gap between two larger blocks. Another burst of gunfire, ice cracking and splintering. He pushed Sophia under the overhang, peering upwards as the rasp of the first paracraft’s engine grew louder - and part of the ice above exploded, hit by a high-power bullet from the sniper rifle. Fist-sized chunks of ice bombarded him. The paracraft roared overhead, a flash of black. The second followed a few seconds later, another burst of bullets pounding their hiding place.

‘Wait there,’ Chase told Sophia, shaking off the shattered ice and scuttling along the narrow passage until he reached a spot where he could see down the crevasse. Keeping low in case the sniper was still aiming back at him, he looked out. The second paracraft, higher up, was rising to breach the top of the crevasse and turn about for another attack, while the first had been forced to continue flying along the ravine.

It wasn’t trying to gain height, though. Instead it was descending rapidly. ‘One’s landing!’ he called to Sophia.

‘I don’t know why you sound so happy about that.’

‘Because as long as they’re in the air, we can’t touch ’em. If they’re on the ground, at least we’ve got some chance of fighting back.’

‘With what? Snowballs?’

The lead vehicle touched down in a cloud of spray, having inflated its rubber skirt just before landing. The parachute collapsed, a huge red flag drifting to the ground as its lines were released. The second paracraft, meanwhile, had reached the top of the ravine, briefly disappearing from sight before swinging round.

Chase quickly unfastened his coat and shrugged it off, ignoring the numerous aches in his upper body. Sophia watched, puzzled. He found a chunk of ice the size of a football and stuffed it into the coat’s hood, bundling the rest of the garment up tightly and holding it below the neck.